Tuesday, 7 June 2011

'There is no greater artwork than a Christian's Life. You may not have a gift of writing, painting or composing, but everybody has a gift of creativity concerning his or her own life. In this sense we all are called to become and artist and to design our life as something which is beautiful and true in the midst of a lost world' Francis Schaeffer

The Famous Artist Michelangelo was in the final weeks of sculpting a giant statue. He had almost finished his work, standing high above the ground on his ladder and carving the stone. His teacher and mentor, a man named Romano, entered the hall and watched his apprentice for about ten minutes.

Finally he asked Michelangelo to come down and to step aside. Romano took a giant axe, went to the almost finished giant statue and broke it into a thousand pieces. Michelangelo could not believe what Romano had done. He stood there staring in disbelief and asking ‘Why?’ Roman turned towards Michelangelo and said, ‘Michelangelo, gifting is cheap, devotion is precious’

If you can grasp this point it will help you understand your creative self-responsibility. Do you have a purpose that shapes your life and is rooted in passion and devotion, not just skills? Do you want to live a mediocre life or discover your maximum potential?

One of my favourite songs is by Matthew West and is quoted on the profile part of my blog page. It was on hearing this song and reading the account of the story above, that I began to realise, perhaps I was not fulfilling my full potential. God really began to challenge me as I asked myself the five questions below. As God is our Creator, I fully believe that we, 'Made in His Image', are also creative beings with the potential to achieve great things, if we only trust God to use that creativity he has planted within us.

The ‘artist-within-you’ process can be described in an interactive way. Each step leads you through one of the process and challenges you to find your perspective on life through a number of workshops and exercises.‘Where Do I come from’ and ‘Who am I’ will enable you to collect the pieces of a puzzle. These pieces contain a lot of information about things that have happened so far in your life and will help you discover your strengths and weaknesses. Then you will bring all these aspects together to form a picture. This will help you as you approach the next stage in your life and seek to discover what you are called to do with those years.Once you have the corners and the edges of the puzzle, its time to make the picture and work on your personal training programme, short term objectives to making the big picture come into focus.And finally how to find a mentor who will help you know how to approach your newly defined goals.

1. Ask the Question: Where do I come from? What does my life look like so far?

2. Ask the Question: Who am I and what Can I do? What are my gifts? What is is my potential? How can I develop further?

3. Ask the Question: Where do I go? As a result of the first two steps you can start painting a picture about your perspective on how your life might unfold in the future. You can start describing your vision for Work, Family, Church/Society and Leisure.

4. Ask the Question: How can I train myself? How do I implement these visions and bring my goals into reality. How can I learn to become my own coach?

5. Ask the Question: Who will help me with this? In this stage we are looking for men and women in our lives that can support and train us. We also have a special mentor-Our Creator, who accompanies us in designing our lives as artists